A haircut

Dear friends,

I passed the one year mark in Kazakhstan this past month, made especially notable by the arrival of our new group of volunteers. With my remote location so far from Almaty, I may not meet any of them until next summer (unless one is assigned to my site, working at a different school, which is a possibility), but just knowing that they are starting training reminds me of how far we’ve come.

This summer I saw more of Kazakhstan that I would have thought possible, but it is still a huge country to explore – especially the cities and nature preserves to the South and West. My parents had a wonderful trip (or so they keep telling me), and should anyone else come to visit, I promise to not make the same mistakes. We will have no train ticket fiascos, there will be no interpreter-less banyas between my two fathers, and I will not sing songs that make my mother cry. No, I will not make the same mistakes again. I’ll make new ones! Just for you. That’s one tourist offer you’ll rarely hear.

Now I’m back at site, and here is the biggest news: I got a haircut, and frankly, I’m a little defensive about it. Not because of the cost (though it was expensive by local standards, it was ridiculously cheap by mine) or the style (I really like how it looks, a little retro but long enough for a ponytail). The problem is this: why are the community responses to this change bothering me so much?

Generally I’ve gotten good reactions and praise. Even my 16-year-old host brother complemented it, though he was honest in his dislike of the styles his other two sisters chose. But most people seem to view it with either relief or excitement mixed with an odd sense of resignation: “Oh, Miss Nora, you look younger, you’ve changed your image!” “It looks good, now all we have to get you to do is wear make-up and dye your hair – then you’ll look really beautiful.” “I guess you’ll be spending more time prepping in the mirror like your mother and sisters” (from my host father).

I’m happy with the style and I’m happy that other people are happy for me. But these comments irrationally bug me, and I’m trying to figure out why. First, of course, is the idea that my image needed changing and that this is another step down the road to conforming to local standards of beauty, femininity, and contented womanhood with a rich husband and a gaggle of kids. Second, people assume I’m simply taking part of a yearly ritual of renovations before the start of school.

Both of these points indicate that people are happy to see me conforming to the collective. Fitting in, matching societal norms, adhering to communal norms, however you put it; these are the aspects of Kazakhstani culture I see emerging here.

I am liked in my village, but people are confused that I like to spend lots of time alone reading, walking, or writing. They don’t quite understand a PCV’s desire to do more and do more faster, cleaner, and with more efficiency, much less why I like to get things done independently. How can I focus in on making grading sheets when there is so much catching up to do, when I could be wandering the school exchanging news, stories, and sometimes out-right gossip? Why don’t I like to do what everyone else is doing?

From this perspective my colleagues, friends, and local family are thrilled that I’m finally showing signs of doing something just like the rest of the crowd – i.e. primping for the opening day of school. If everyone else were painting their kitchens instead of getting haircuts, I think folks here would be equally excited to find out that my walls were a new shade of chartreuse. By which I mean to say that what it really bugging me here is not the expectations of me as a woman (I have to get over that every single day, so at this point the issue raises a only tiny lurch in my psyche) but the assumption that I, too, am rejoicing in joining the fold, in becoming a sheep.

That is a metaphor that extends well, incidentally, to explain where this joy in conforming comes from. I can imagine that a lone herder coming in off the steppe or a farmer returning to life after the haze of harvesting 72 hours straight would revel in the communal fire and rituals of tea waiting for them in a summer mountain camp or gingerbread village.

But for me, it grates. No, I want to say, actually this haircut is for me and me alone! I wanted to change, not conform. I wanted a new style to make myself feel pretty, not to fit your ideals of beauty – that’s why I picked the style on my own! Don’t you see, this isn’t fitting in, it’s a rebellion – I would have never done this at home. It’s a unique cultural experience in a foreign country that I can write home about, not something routine for the fall. Don’t assume this will lead to make-up – cosmetics are a personal choice, damn it, not a logical progression towards your vision of a stable, well-fed community!

Even more frightening is the small voice that says, well, Nora, maybe they’re right. Maybe you are so assimilated into this culture that you are conforming unconsciously and all your reactionary sentiments are simply denial.

Whew. On a side note, explaining why I don’t use cosmetics usually leads to more confusion, mostly because I usually try to defend myself from a personal angle – I’m too lazy, I had too much make-up in my youth on stage, I never took the time to learn, I was playing Frisbee instead… these excuses don’t go over well. But when I debuted my new argument – from a more communal perspective – my host sister began taking my side. Now when the issue comes up, as it often does, she jumps in and explains in the way that makes sense to her: “Nora says that in America many women don’t wear make-up and that it’s OK in their culture. Isn’t that great?”

I realize that this explanation is not entirely true; it’s weird in America to go cosmetic-free too. My mother and my sister both color (this is how the phrase directly translates from Russian to English, which I love. It’s the same verb you would use to say you were painting your fence), but if I bring that up, I weaken the argument for my acceptability in American culture. Intentionally rejecting what your family does? Opening yourself to critique by members of your society? These things would make a Kazakhstani sad, not empower her as they do me. Just look at what my host sister said again, the subtext is “I wish out culture would allow us to do that.” They’re not wearing make-up necessarily because they like it, but because everyone does it and they’ve got to be a part of everyone to feel good. The communal versus the individual.

To return to haircuts, the discomfort I’m really feeling here is really this divide, this clash of cultures, the leap between individual and communal. I resent feeling like a lemming – our culture pounds it into us to resist sameness. Now that I know the root of this uneasiness, I think I can deal with the bile that rises every time someone mentions a new brand of spiffy hair products I might like to try. They are only, after all, welcoming me to their side of the world. And I can always appease my individualist side by resisting those cosmetics.

And you, oh you, reading this in your comfortable chair with wheels or balancing on a cushion, laptop humming, you are amazed that this should come as such a realization. Obviously there is this divide. Obviously this is a disconcerting wall to come up against. The Nora of last year, Nora circa August 2006, she agrees with you. She has read up on the Peace Corps, lived in Russia, paged through handbooks on culture shock and knows the general distinctions between individual/communal and progressive/traditional cultures. Even in my first months at side I could pinpoint evidence of this divide: in classroom practices where cheating is seen to benefit the whole or in how hard it is for a single unwed mother to marry after breaking such a taboo. But who could guess that only after a year can you begin to notice that vague emotions truly indicate fundamental leaps of culture? Who knew that most epiphanies come from an indefinable feeling of discomfort stemming from the reaction to your new haircut? This is only in Kazakhstan, and only for me – but also for all world travelers in every country. Despite all my individualist hopes, others have felt this. As much as I want this to be mine and mine alone, nothing can be purely individual, just as nothing can really fit my village’s vision of universal conformity. Try as we might, we can't make everything fit our perfect visions.  But we still try.  Isn't human nature funny?